Precarious democracies : understanding regime stability and change in Colombia and Venezuela / Ana María Bejarano.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bejarano, Ana María.

Contributor:

Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies.

Series:

Recent titles from the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies

From the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Political stability--Venezuela.

Political stability.

Political stability--Colombia.

Democracy--Venezuela.

Democracy.

Venezuela.

Democracy--Colombia.

Colombia.

Venezuela--Politics and government--1999-.

Politics and government.

Colombia--Politics and government--1974-.

Physical Description:

xvii, 350 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Notre Dame, Ind. : University of Notre Dame Press, [2011]

Summary:

Why has democracy in Colombia and Venezuela evolved in very different directions? In Precarious Democracies, Ana Maria Bejarano provides a comparative historical analysis of how the democratic regimes in these two countries have diverged, following similar transitions from authoritarian rule to democracy in the late 1950s

Rather than focusing on resource-driven explanations, such as the role of oil in Venezuela and coffee in Colombia, or on short-term elite choices and calculations, Bejarano argues that democratic development in Colombia and Venezuela is best understood from a vantage point that privileges political history, especially the history of institutional evolution. The book makes the case that a comparative historical institutional framework-focused both on institutional legacies from the distant past (such as the state and political parties) and on those from more recent critical junctures (the foundational pacts)-provides the best lens to account for the divergent trajectories followed by democratic regimes in Colombia and Venezuela in the second half of the twentieth century. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part 1 Histroy Matters

1 Oil versus Coffee: Searching for the Structural Foundations of Regime Type 25

2 Beyond Oil and Coffee: The Political Foundations of Democratic Rule 44

Part II Rethinking Pacted Transitions And Their Legacies

3 Reading Pacts as Political Blueprints The Institutional Legacies of Pacted Transitions 79

Part III The Struggle For Democratic Institutoinalization

4 Subduing the Challengers: Disarming, Subordinating, and Incorporating Contenders on the Right and the Left 133

5 Institutionalizing Inclusion and Contestation: The Making of a Democratic Political Society 177

6 From Exceptions to Rules? A Tale of Two Unhappy Democracies 216.

Notes:

"Recent titles from the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies."

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780268022266

0268022267

OCLC:

693809788